Jenny Agutter's Schoolgirl Gets a Sentimental Education in David Greene's I Start Counting

I START COUNTING 

(David Greene, UK, 1970, 105 minutes) 

David Greene's vivid, haunting film is a coming-of-age tale, a folk horror, a serial killer thriller, and a decidedly Catholic take on sex and death.

Though only 16 at the time, Jenny Agutter was not an inexperienced actress, but she brings an impetuousness to the role that makes her performance especially compelling. Though she grew blonder over the years, she has long, brown hair here and a makeup-free face; she acts even younger, which is appropriate for 14-year-old Catholic schoolgirl Wynne. 

Drawing from UK writer Audrey Erskine Lindop's 1966 novel, Greene by way of screenwriter Richard Harris (not that one) never explains what happened to her birth parents or her foster father, and it doesn't really matter. 

Wynne has a foster family consisting of a mother (A Clockwork Orange's Madge Ryan), a brother a few years older (I Could Go on Singing's Gregory Phillips), and another brother (The Spy Who Loved Me's Bryan Marshall) nearly 20 years her senior; younger brother Len (below right) suggests that their mother is divorced when he mentions that she didn't like her husband. 

An older man (Billy Russell), an unbelievably noisy eater, joins them for meals and nights around the telly. Though Greene doesn't spell it out, he's their rather eccentric grandfather, first introduced through a frosted glass window fondling his pet mouse and looking more like a peeper than a relation. Maybe even both.

Wynne's social life revolves around her flirtatious friend, Corinne (Coronation Street's Clare Sutcliffe in her feature-film debut), who favors miniskirts. Wynne is no shrinking violet herself, though she dresses more modestly. 

Greene opens on a bucolic scene: a serene pond, a walking path, and ancient trees that suggest a fairytale, but without any special effects. The folk-tinged baroque-pop theme song, also titled "I Start Counting," that plays over the opening credits makes everything seem slightly surreal. 

Vocalist Lindsey Moore, about whom little is known, recalls Vashti Bunyan, which may have been intentional–Vashti's Jagger-Richards cover "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind" debuted as a single in 1965–while predicting mesmerizing vocalists like Sarah Nixey of Black Box Recorder, Florence Shaw of Dry Cleaning, and the late Trish Keenan of Broadcast–the latter, as it turns out, were big fans of experimental composer Basil Kirchin (The Abominable Dr. Phibes). His brassy, dissonant score for Greene's 1967 The Shuttered Room, with Carol Lynley and Oliver Reed, is also a treat.

As cinematographer Alex Thomson, an Oscar winner for John Boorman's 1981 Excalibur, pans in on the pond, it becomes clear that something isn't quite right, even before he reveals what's wrong with this pretty picture: a brief glimpse of something partially obscured by underwater flora–the face of an attractive young woman staring sightlessly through dead eyes. 

In only a few seconds, Greene establishes that things are not what they seem. The forest is quite lovely, but a serial killer is on the loose, and no young Berkshire County women, including Wynne and Corinne, are safe. 

With her family, however, Wynne feels secure. She's the only Catholic, and she's fairly devout. There's a crucifix above her twin bed, and she dutifully confesses to a priest–not that she has much to confess. She's a teenager, though, and strange, possibly sinful feelings are stirring inside of her. 

Boys her own age take an interest, but she couldn't be bothered--they have no chill. Corinne fancies her brother Len, a handsome lad who works at a swinging record store and hangs out with a local dealer (Michael Feast, having a ball), indicating that he enjoys the occasional lysergic escapade.

Len isn't a bad guy, but he could be, which is germane to Greene's non-didactic, non-judgmental take on a teenager's libido blinding her to the danger in her midst. It's one thing, after all, to be curious about a serial killer, a common teen obsession, but it's another to court his attention, and that's what Wynne does, under the pretext that he would never hurt her. 

Granted, there are other men in her life, like the priest (Lewis Priander) and the solicitous conductor (Simon Ward) she and Corinne run into most every time they take the bus to her old neighborhood where they like to muck about in the condemned, two-story home in which Wynne grew up. This state of affairs suggests both a reduction in income and encroaching gentrification, since the Kinch clan now live in a tower block in bland, suburban Bracknell, parts of which appears to be under construction.

Then there's George, the virile 32-year-old brother who lives at home, presumably to help support his family. Even the blond, blue-eyed conductor is handsome, giving Wynne yet another crush option, except he mostly makes eyes at Corinne whose miniskirts rise up when she sits down, though it's something he also criticizes, admonishing, "Your skirts are too short."

When George gazes longingly at a black-and-white photo of him and a young woman, Greene suggests a lost love (a flashback reveals a fatal fall). He's single now, and gainfully employed. He also dotes on Wynne, who has developed a major crush, which would be bad enough, except she also believes he's the killer, since he's been leaving clues about a secret life. 

From the start, Greene confirms that she's right about the secret, but doesn't explain whether or not he's the killer--until the end--but what should scare Wynne away, compels her. The director doesn't provide a reason, and nor is it necessary. The film would be less intriguing, less resonant if he did. 

If you were ever a teenage girl, you probably had a crush at some point on the worst person. Not the worst in terms of their persona, but the worst for you. We've all been there. Though a man could have written the novel, I'm not surprised that a woman did, and though it would have been interesting to see how a woman would have adapted it, Greene always honors Wynne's perspective, as blinkered as it may be. Everything unfolds through her eyes.

George prepares for each day with the bathroom door open, so she watches him shave and put on his shirt, but nothing more intimate than that.

One day, she notices scratches on his back, presumably from a woman's nails. Later, since she spies on him whenever she can, she catches him placing a package in the garbage cans outside their building. When she gets the chance, she snatches the bundle and brings it back to her room, where she opens it up to find a cream-colored sweater with a sizable blood stain. 

She doesn't tell Corinne, she doesn't confront George, and she doesn't inform the authorities; she simply ramps up her campaign of surveillance. Greene suggests that it's possibly even a turn-on. A contemporary filmmaker might be more explicit, but I prefer his subtlety and restraint.

She has fantasies, for instance, like one in which her hand slides under her crisp, white sheets while thinking about George--and as Christ looks down from the cross above--or when she's taking a bath, and he walks in, and places a hand on her shoulder. She quickly comes to, which keeps Greene on the right side of the censors, but also suggests that she doesn't know what would happen next. She's a virgin, and it's possible that Corinne is, too, though she brags that she's had sex seven times. "Seven!," she yells.

Wynne also asks George questions designed to trip him up, but phrased so that they sound as innocuous as possible. It mostly confuses him. "You're a funny little biscuit," he responds to one of her odd inquiries. He knows about the crush, but seems oblivious to her suspicions. 

In addition to fantasies, Greene inserts flashbacks, like one in which Wynne remembers George handing her a silver foil-wrapped box for her birthday, while everyone looks on eagerly. She opens it to find a white rabbit with red eyes and a Victorian outfit. I believe he's meant to recall Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit–which makes Wynne Alice and the forest her Wonderland. 

The rabbit is, frankly, pretty scary-looking, but Wynne hugs and even sleeps with it in a way that suggests she's still a child, and also that she associates the creature with the handsome human who gave it to her. If anything, she appears to imagine she's embracing his body rather than that of a toy. 

To protect George, she returns to the old house and incinerates the sweater using the cast iron stove. Each time, Greene makes it clear that someone is both following and spying on her, whether she's with Corinne or not. 

We learn more about George when Wynne visits him at work. The film's only nudity is plastered all over the wall: dozens of nudie cuties. It's yet another sign that he prefers adult women, though she barely notices. She's so besotted that she believes love is all he needs, explaining, "When people have people who love them, they don't have to worry about anything." Later, she tells him, "I understand you, and I don't want anyone to hurt you." 

In other words, he'll stop the strangling once he accepts Wynne as his savior. He never takes the hint, because he always sees her as a child. 

That doesn't mean her crush has no basis in reality. George may not see her as an adult, but he sees her in a way no one else does. She's neither alone nor lonely, just a little odd, and he's always happy to humor her oddities and to give her a ride whenever he has time. He even tells her she's pretty, though she seems more embarrassed than flattered by the compliment. 

As her campaign heats up, she makes mistakes, finds out things she wishes she hadn't–not necessarily what she expected–and gets in trouble, but Greene never overplays his hand. 

(The scene in which she overindulges in George's hooch is hilarious.) Wynne even tries to seduce him, the most cringe-worthy thing she could do. I've gone to bat for melodrama, but that isn't what's happening here. Though not quite a kitchen sink drama, it's more grounded than that, but nor is it a tragedy or full-blown cautionary tale. Unlike some women in the film, Wynne will live to make more mistakes in the future, but falling for another potential murderer seems unlikely. 

I went into I Start Counting cold, other than an encounter by way of Kier-La Janisse's wonderful 2021 documentary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror–I credit her for encouraging me to track it down–and didn't know how things would end, but the metaphor of the house in the woods becomes crystal clear. (Though it doesn't appear in Janisse's 2012 book, House of Psychotic Women, the film would fit right in.)

The storyline is neither wholly unpredictable, nor otherwise. Wynne gets an education in adulthood, sex, and  life, and it's consistently gripping, due largely to Jenny Agutter and her touching vulnerability combined with a certain fearlessness, but everything–and everyone else–lives up to it. 

Compared to the films with which it shares  thematic similarities, like Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, Jerzy Skolimowksi's Deep End, and even Hitchcock's lurid Frenzy (which features Madge Ryan), I Start Counting is a gentler proposition, but what it suggests about the lure of danger, the compulsion to control the object of one's affection, and the invincible power of love, is every bit as dark. It's just that it's filtered through an adolescent worldview. 

In her commentary track, Samm Deighan mentions an earlier Hitchcock film: 1943's Shadow of a Doubt with Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotton. Though it didn't occur to me until she mentioned it, she's right. Uncle Charlie is more problematic than George, but the film also revolves around a young woman's affinity for a man to whom she just happens to be related. 

Hitchcock made the film during the height of the production code, and he had to be more circumspect than Greene, though I don't recall any sexual spark between the two, but like Wynne, Charlie sees her uncle as something other than who he actually is, while the elder Charlie–they share the same name–makes her feel seen. She may bring out his best qualities, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a bad man. Nor does it mean his affection for her is insincere, assuming a sociopath is capable of affection, and therein lies the tragedy, because she loves him, but he's beyond redemption. 

In short order, Agutter would go on to star in Walkabout, Logan's Run, and An American Werewolf in London–setting hearts aflame all the while–but she doesn't just play a minor in Greene's film. As she reveals in the interview included with the restored Fun City Editions Blu-ray, "He told the entire crew not to swear in front of me." It's doubtful he issued the same proclamation regarding Clare Sutcliffe. Though she successfully passes for an obnoxious, self-obsessed teenager, Sutcliffe was a full decade older than Agutter–and five years older than the more mature-looking Gregory Phillips. 

I've continued to enjoy the now-73-year-old Agutter's performances on British television shows that often turn up on PBS, like Spooks–MI-5 in the States–and Call the Midwife, now in its 15th season, in which the actress who once appeared fully nude in a Nicolas Roeg picture at 16, plays Sister Julienne, a fully-covered Mother Superior. She does quite a nice job, too, in a role with faint echoes of the devout schoolgirl she played 56 years ago.

I Start Counting is now out of print in the States, though a Region 2 edition exists through the British Film Institute, and it's packed with twice as many extra features, including the 2020 interview with Agutter and Deighan's informative, context-rich commentary. Used copies of the former now go for as much as $129.99 on eBay, though less expensive copies abound. 

I have faith that the film will return to home video in the States in the not-too-distant future. Thanks to Kier-La Janisse and other influential enthusiasts, it's unlikely to ever disappear completely and consistently likely to discomfort and bedazzle each new viewer who makes its acquaintance. 

 

I Start Counting and The Shuttered Room are both available on YouTube. 

Images: ithankyou (Jenny Agutter), Mondo Digital (Billy Russell, Madge Ryan, and Gregory Phillips), the IMDb (Berkshire forest, Agutter in forest, and Agutter and Bryan Marshall), Trailers from Hell (Agutter and Clare Sutcliffe), The Kim Newman Web Site (Agutter and Marshall), Fopp (Agutter and creepy rabbit), Cinema Retro (Agutter and Marshall), American Cinematheque (Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten), and eBay (Walkabout).

Horror from Around the World: Canada

Since I posted a list of horror westerns last year after moderating a panel at Crypticon, I figured I should probably post lists from other subgenre or country-specific panels in which I've moderated and/or participated over the years. 

In every case, I put together a preliminary list before crowd-sourcing for more. I compiled this Canadian one in 2018 for a panel called Horror From Around the World. Since then, Jason Weiss and I have moderated panels on French and Spanish horror; I'll also post those lists at some point. If you see any key Canadian titles missing, please feel free to let me know. 

In order by release date, plus directors and notable cast members.

1960s - 1970s

The Mask (Julian Roffman; cowriter Slavko Vorkapich, 3-D, 1961) 

Cannibal Girls (Ivan Reitman, 1973) 

The Pyx (Harvey Hart; Karen Black and Christopher Plummer, 1973)  

Black Christmas (Bob Clark; Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, and Andrea Martin, 1974)  

Ilsa; She Wolf of the SS (Don Edmonds, 1975) 

Shivers (David Cronenberg, 1975) 

Sudden Fury (Brian Damude, 1975) 

House by the Lake/Death Weekend (William Fruet; Brenda Vaccaro, 1976) 

The Haunting of Julia (Richard Loncraine; Mia Farrow, Keir Dullea, and Tom Conti, 1977) 

Rabid (David Cronenberg; Marilyn Chambers, 1977) 

Rituals (Peter Carter; Hal Holbrook 1977) 

The Brood (David Cronenberg; Samantha Eggar and Oliver Reed, 1979) 

1980s - 1990s

The Changeling (Peter Medak; George C. Scott, 1980) 

Prom Night (Paul Lynch; Jamie Lee Curtis and Leslie Nielsen, 1980) 

Terror Train (Roger Spottiswoode; Jamie Lee Curtis, Ben Johnson, 1981) 

Happy Birthday to Me (J. Lee Thompson; Melissa Sue Anderson and Glenn Ford, 1981) 

My Bloody Valentine (George Mihalka, 1981) 

The Pit (Lew Lehman, 1981) 

Scanners (David Cronenberg; Jennifer O'Neill and Patrick McGoohan 1981) 

Curtains (Richard Ciupka and Peter R. Simpson, 1983) 

Videodrome (David Cronenberg; James Woods and Debbie Harry, 1983) 

The Fly (David Cronenberg; Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, 1986) 

Pin (Sandor Stern, Terry O'Quinn, 1988) 

Tales from the Gimli Hospital (Guy Maddin, 1988) 

Careful (Guy Maddin, 1992) 

Kissed (Lynne Stopkewich; Molly Parker, 1996) 

Cube (Vincenzo Natali, 1997) 

Top of the Food Chain (John Paisz; Campbell Scott, 1999) 

2000s - 2010s

Ginger Snaps (John Fawcett; Katherine Isabelle, 2000) 

Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (Guy Maddin, 2002) 

Cube Zero (Ernie Barbarash, 2004) 

Ginger Snaps Back (Grant Harvey, Katherine Isabelle, 2004) 

Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed (Brett Sullivan; Katherine Isabelle, 2004) 

Pontypool (Bruce McDonald; Stephen McHattie, 2009) 

Splice (Vincenzo Natali; Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, 2009) 

The Wild Hunt (Alexandre Franchi, 2009) 

Tucker and Dale vs Evil (Eli Craig; Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk, 2010) 

American Mary (Jen and Sylvia Soska; Katherine Isabelle, 2012) 

Enemy (Denis Villeneuve; Jake Gyllenhall and Sarah Gadon, 2013) 

Back Country (Adam MacDonald, 2014) 

Black Mountain Side (Nick Szostakiwskyj, 2014) 

Pyewacket (Adam MacDonald, 2017) 

What Keeps You Alive (Colin Minihan, 2018) 

Thanks to all who contributed suggestions, especially my Seattle Film Critics Society colleague, Sara Michelle Fetters, who often writes about horror at Moviefreak.com. All images from the IMDb (Olivia Hussey in Black Christmas, Claudette Nevins in The Mask, and Georgina Reilly in Pontypool).

Abbie Cornish Astonishes in Australian Filmmaker Cate Shortland’s Debut, Somersault

SOMERSAULT 

(Cate Shortland, Australia, 2004, 106 minutes) 

In her directorial debut, Somersault, Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland turns the idea of the unlikable protagonist on its head by portraying her central character with the kind of empathy this young woman craves. 

Sixteen-year-old Heidi (Abbie Cornish with white-blonde hair and eyebrows, lending her a look both feral and ethereal) has been coasting through life on her looks. She doesn't appear to have any particular interests, though she does carry a scrapbook and a glue stick with her wherever she goes. 

The film has hardly begun when she seduces her mother's boyfriend, Adam (Damian De Montemas). She starts by asking about his tattoo, touching it, and giving him a kiss. Things proceed from there–until her mother, Nicole (Olivia Pigeot), catches them in the act. After making herself persona non grata, Heidi catches a bus from Canberra, where Shortland grew up, to the alpine resort town of Jindabyne where she knows exactly one person. 

 

When her attempt to stay with the former fling goes awry, Heidi drops by a local watering hole, and finds Sean (Ben Tate), another man with whom to crash, though he's mostly just looking for a good time. She gives him what he wants, but it's unclear if it's also what she wants (Cornish, 21 at the time, has several nude scenes). After Sean and his friends--who appear to be skiers--head back to Sydney, she's on her own again, looking for a job and a place to stay. 

She meets Joe (Avatar's Sam Worthington with a spiky mullet), the son of a wealthy farmer, at a rustic diner. They banter for a bit, and though he seems to find her attractive, he isn't exactly swept off his feet, possibly because of the age gap. Convinced they made a connection, she insists on coming home with him, but things end much as they did with his predecessor. Fortunately, kindly motel manager Irene (a warm, maternal Lynette Curran) gives her a temporary place to stay: her metal-head son's old apartment. 

Heidi gets a job at a petrol station next. Though she and Joe meet again, it's hard to tell if he just likes sleeping with her, or if he likes her as a person. 

He's more reserved, and as it turns out, has problems of his own. The actors have chemistry, though–quite a bit. Since Heidi doesn't have any friends, there's a sense that she doesn't know how to relate to women her own age, with the possible exception of her coworker Bianca (Hollie Andrew).

 

This isn't the kind of film where the director focuses exclusively on the central character. Once Joe enters the scene, Shortland shows what he gets up to when he isn't with Heidi. He has one friend, an older gay man (Erik Thomson), who doesn't judge him, and another, a straight man around his age, who does. That friend considers Heidi low class, loose–a slut. 

 

There's another man in town, Bianca's stepfather (Paul Gleeson), who shares the same sentiments, because Heidi flirted with him when she was looking for a job, a decision she comes to regret. He engages in a form of sexism that may not be overt, but it's definitely insidious, and leaves her feeling more like an outsider than ever. Though it's hardly great that she put the moves on her mom's boyfriend, this confused young woman is more than her worst impulses. If anything, she makes the tightly-wound Joe uncomfortable, because she wears her heart on her sleeve. 

 

In Jindabyne, Heidi comes to find she can't run away from her problems when the primary problem is her. It doesn't mean she deserves the treatment she receives, or that she doesn't deserve happiness, just that she needs to learn to have more faith in herself and not to let others define her. 

 

Fortunately, none of this is heavy-handed. Heidi does eventually have a breakdown, but it forces a necessary reckoning. By the end, she isn't so unlikable after all. At the very least, she's more understandable. Nonetheless, in looking through the film's original reviews, I found that women responded more favorably to the film. Two male critics went so far as to describe Heidi as "trampy," which makes me think they missed the point of the thing (kudos to Scott Tobias and Neil Young for their more considered responses).  

 

As for Cornish, she's quite astonishing, whether singing "The Clapping Song" to herself while wandering through the forest or dancing in her skivvies to Alvin Stardust's "My Coo Ca Choo," she's always alive in the moment.

 

I get why Australian actors who made their mark at home would move to the United States where they can secure work that pays better and reaches more people. It worked for Nicole Kidman and for a while it worked for Eric Bana and Simon Baker, too, though both actors eventually returned to Australia where, to my mind, they’ve been doing more interesting work.

 

Since she moved to the States, Cornish has been working steadily, and for all I know she's perfectly happy, but I believe she's given her best performances in Australian films, like 2006's Candy with Heath Ledger and, especially, Jane Campion's 2009 Bright Star with Ben Whishaw. 

In the States, she's worked on more commercial projects that have asked less from her to the extent that Somersault might startle anyone only familiar with Sucker Punch, Limitless, or Prime Video's Jack Ryan, because she absolutely holds the screen in an intensely challenging role.

 

Unlike her leading lady, Cate Shortland has worked primarily in Australia. A surprising exception was Marvel's 2021 standalone feature Black Widow with Scarlett Johansson. On the basis of her previous, modestly-budgeted features, that's not a move I would have seen coming, though her track record as a director of women-in-peril films led Johansson to insist on her, telling Variety that 2012's World War II-set Lore is "a perfect film."

 

Actors and directors sometimes meet at just the right time, and that was the case with Shortland, who was making her first feature after several shorts, and Cornish, who was playing her first lead after several supporting roles. 

Somersault is an exceptionally fine film, eminently deserving of restoration and rediscovery. It's beautifully shot by The Hunter's Robert Humphries and scored with delicacy and restraint by Sydney outfit Decoder Ring, resulting in something simultaneously electric and affecting in its depiction of the kind of young woman too easily dismissed as "easy" when she's anything but. 

 

Somersault plays New York's Metrograph through Feb 28 and opens at Austin Film Society Mar 8 and Toronto's Paradise Theatre Mar 13. No Seattle dates yet–if at all–but it comes to VOD Mar 27. Images from Film Movement via Reverse Shot (Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington), Google Play (Cornish), TV Guide (Cornish and Lynette Curran), and AFI (Cornish).  

What’s Cooler Than Cool: Michael Almereyda’s Vampire Tale Nadja with Elina Löwensohn

NADJA 

(Michael Almereyda, USA, 1994, 

93 minutes) 

I say what's, what's cooler than being cool? (Ice cold)

--Outcast, "Hey Ya!" (2003)

 

The essence of 1990s cool, Michael Almereyda's black and white mood piece infuses German Expressionism with post-punk attitude. "Nights…nights without sleep," Nadja (Romanian-American actor Elina Löwensohn, who had appeared in Schindler's List the year before) intones at the outset as the filmmaker superimposes her image over fog-enshrouded New York City.

Almereyda then catches up with Nadja on a date explaining that she doesn't have to work, because she comes from money. Her father didn't have to work either, and for the same reason. The night ends with Nadja feeding on her date. She may not have to work, but to survive: she needs to feed.

Cinematographer Jim Denault shot the sequence in Pixelvision–a toy camera created by Fisher Price–and the effect is more arty than scary even as the ravenous vampire ends up with blood all over her face. I was also reminded of surveillance footage, something which will play into Almereyda's 2000 ultra-paranoid, modern-dress version of Hamlet with Ethan Hawke. 

As Nadja's late-night perambulations continue, she drops by an underpopulated, Edward Hopper-esque diner where she asks Lucy (actor-turned-author Galaxy Craze), an androgynous-looking woman, for a light, and they proceed to smoke and engage in a rather personal conversation for two people who just met. She appears to be looking for a friend when she confesses things like, "I'm so alone," but as the evening continues, their platonic rapport turns sexual--even though Lucy isn't exactly single.

While Nadja flirts, fucks, and feasts her way across the city, Van Helsing (Peter Fonda in longhair-hippie mode) kills her father and plots with his nephew, Jim (Martin Donovan), Lucy's oblivious husband, about how to eliminate more of her kind. To him, vampires are "raving idiots, insane, monsters, deformed, the walking dead." A silent movie-style flashback, which evokes F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, suggests he used to feel otherwise. 

(Since Fonda also plays Nadja's father in flashbacks, it's worth noting that the Beatles took inspiration for 1966's "She Said She Said" from Fonda's declaration, "I know what it's like to be dead," while tripping on acid.)

Beyond Murnau, Almereyda drew from Bram Stoker's Dracula, André Breton's semiautobiographical novel Nadja, Carl Theodor Dreyer's gothic horror Vampyr, and Lambert Hillyer's Dracula's Daughter, a stylish 1936 film about an aristocratic foreigner (below) seeking out London's prettiest necks.

Though Nadja seems lonely, she has a male companion, Renfield (Almereyda mainstay Karl Geary), but he's more like an assistant--"a slave," as she puts it--than a friend or lover. She also has a twin, Edgar (Jared Harris with passable Romanian accent), except he's in a sort of coma, though it isn't clear if he's a vampire or just severely anemic. His nurse Cassandra (Suzi Amis), Jim's sister, serves as his companion. (Three years after starring in Titanic, Amis married James Cameron, and stopped acting around the same time. It's possible she doesn't miss it, but seeing her again made me a little sad.) 

With Nadja's help, Edgar gets better, while Lucy, who has fallen under her sway, gets worse. What appears to be a case of vampirism, however, turns out to be more of a psychic ill, since Nadja, like Countess Marya in Dracula's Daughter, can also communicate and control minds telepathically. 

Though Nadja could rest on her laurels after hypnotizing Lucy, she sets out to make Cassandra her next victim, which leads the nurse to flee Edgar's abode, except no one can ever really escape the vampire. The chase leads to the twins' Romanian castle at which the entire extended family will meet. 

I'm not certain how Almereyda decided which sequences to shoot in 35mm and which in Pixelvision, though it seems more random than not with the exception of the more violent encounters. Then again, Nadja follows his second feature, 1992's Another Girl, Another Planet, also with Löwensohn, which Jim Denault shot entirely in Pixelvision before transferring to 16mm. 

There isn't a lot to Nadja, but if you surrender to its spell, a good time awaits, and I found the final sequence quite transcendent. It also predicts the cool-cat vampire tales to come, like Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, which takes place in the beautiful ruins of Detroit and Tangier, and Ana Lily Amirpour's Farsi-language A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, which transfers Persian and French New Wave aesthetics to suburban Bakersfield. 

Nonetheless, the story of its making is nearly as compelling as the film itself, since David Lynch and then-wife Mary Sweeney produced and funded the picture--Lynch also cameos as a loopy morgue attendant--and Peter Fonda, who would receive a richly deserved Oscar nod for Victor Nuñez's Ulee’s Gold only three years later, was so enthusiastic about the project that he flew to New York on his own dime and volunteered his services (not the done thing for an actor at any level). I would like to think that Van Helsing's reflective sunglasses are a nod to his mirrored shades in the era-defining Easy Rider. 

Almereyda also stacked the deck with alt-rock and trip-hop, but while working on the restoration with Arbelos, he axed the Portishead and My Bloody Valentine tracks to make way for more of Simon Fisher Turner's shimmering score. This will surely disappoint fans of the original version, though Fisher Turner's score really is pretty terrific, and it was probably quite a coup in 1994 to secure the services of Derek Jarman's favored composer.  

The central character, however, remains the same. When it comes to vampire films, the casting is crucial, and Bucharest-born Elina Löwensohn, with her Louise Brooks-meets-Anna Karina good looks, spectral intensity, and deadpan affect is as perfect for the role of Nadja as Hungarian-born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó, aka Bela Lugosi, was for Count Dracula.

Nadja, in a new 4K edition, opens at The Beacon Cinema on Fri, Feb 13. Images from Le Cinema Club (Elina Löwensohn), Center for Contemporary Arts - Santa Fe (Löwensohn and Galaxy Craze), MUBI (Gloria Holden), Indiewire (David Lynch), and Arbelos / Grasshopper (Peter Fonda).  

The Return of Los Golfos ("The Delinquents"): Carlos Saura's Searing 1959 Neorealist Debut

LOS GOLFOS / The Delinquents 

(Carlos Saura, Spain, 1959, 84 minutes) 

Los Golfos is one of the most uncompromising films I've ever seen about the trap of poverty. 

Carlos Saura, in his feature-film debut, doesn't even make his protagonists especially likeable, though they're always engaging. He simply shows them building to a plan that could set them on the path to prosperity–or leave them with nothing. There's no middle ground; it's either success or failure. 

Granted, the Spanish title translates as The Delinquents or The Hooligans, but Saura, who began as a director of documentary shorts, isn't being strictly metaphorical, and nor does his film, which he shot on location in Madrid's less photogenic neighborhoods, qualify as exploitation fare. It falls squarely in the neorealist camp, something I wouldn't say about his more stylized flamenco films, like 1983's Oscar-nominated musical Carmen. 

And unlike the American B-movies of the time, these guys aren't tricked out in leather to race around on motorcycles. They're just trying to get by. 

It's always a risk to hitch your wagon to a star, but it's the best option around, so Juan (Óscar Cruz) has been training to become a matador, and his friends will do anything to help him out. Juan is taking a risk, too–the biggest, really–because not everyone is cut out to be a matador. He's also motivated by a porter job that has him lugging heavy baskets of produce. 

For what it's worth, Juan has no reservations about plunging banderillas (long pointed sticks) into bulls' backs. What might seem like animal cruelty to an outsider–and I'm not saying that it isn't–is par for the course for the aspiring matador, who doesn't come across as much of a deep thinker. 

For anyone who struggled with Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar, which centers on an abused donkey, or Albert Serra's bullfighting documentary Afternoons of Solitude, which features several abused bulls, Los Golfos could prove a tough sit, though Saura mostly focuses on life outside the ring. 

Right: Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey in Afternoons of Solitude

At first, I assumed the quintet was acting primarily out of loyalty and friendship, but it's only toward the end that it becomes clear they're looking to become part of a matador's entourage, which doesn't exclude loyalty and friendship by any means, but Juan is as much a potential meal ticket as a friend. 

Though the film has abundant Spanish flavor--plaintive flamenco guitar, heartrending folk singing--the narrative could have just as easily centered on a basketball player in Harlem, a football player in South Central, or any number of other athlete-in-the-city combinations. Some professional players are more than happy to share their largesse with the hometown crew.

The film begins as one of the youths robs a blind merchant, the first sign that they aren't stealing from those who can take a hit, but from those who need the money as much as they do. If anything, their victims come across as more sympathetic, but that's Saura's point: they're victims, too. Victims of a system that benefits from their exploitation–little surprise that the film was censored in Spain, even after a well received premiere at Cannes. 

Later, they steal parts from trucks and motorcycles to sell for cash, and they rob a man who's simply going home from work. For what it's worth, they aren't armed, they don't kill anyone, and they don't inflict any permanent injuries, but they're as forceful and intimidating as necessary. 

They also have a moll in Juan's self-possessed girlfriend, Visi (María Mayer), who assists with some of their schemes, like the time she lets a patron cozy up to her at a bar while Ramón (Luis Marín, a standout among the mostly non-professional cast) attempts to lift an unattended wallet. As Juan tells Visi after a night of romance–a sequence censored in Spain since they're pictured in bed–"If I'm lucky and I win, I'll get you out of this place." 

Marín also appears in the terrific 1957 short, La Tarde del Domingo, a damning portrait of a family of oppressors from the perspective of their put-upon maid (Isana Medel); it's included with the new Radiance release.

To Saura's credit, there are no weak links in the cast. Because he keeps exposition to a minimum, it took me a while to sort everyone out, but that has nothing to do with the performances. The filmmaker found young men with distinctive features and personas, who work well together, though most--Marín aside--would leave acting behind afterward. 

The risks intensify when Juan meets with promoter Don Félix (Arturo Ors) to inform him he's ready for competition. Don is happy to oblige, but only if he pays 20,000 pesetas upfront. I'm not sure if he's taking advantage of Juan's inexperience or if it's pay-to-play for all first-timers, but Juan and his friends decide it's worth the price to send him on his way to fame and fortune. 

Since petty crimes won't add up quickly enough, they plan one big score instead. Nothing works according to plan, but these delinquents are relentless, and they won't let anything stand in their way. Since Los Golfos is neorealism bordering on noir, they'll have more unpleasant surprises ahead. 

Saura ends on a note of cruel irony. That isn't to suggest that he's cruel, though you could see it that way, since the director created the pitiless scenario (he wrote the screenplay with director Mario Camus and journalist Daniel Sueiro). If anything, he had to tone down the politics, since the censors rejected the previous anti-fascist projects he had proposed.  

In Michael Eaude's Saura obituary for The Guardian, he states that "its implicit critique of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco meant that it was forbidden in Spain for another couple of years." Because the 1962 release was censored, it had to be pieced together for this 4K restoration, so it's fortunate the missing elements were accessible, thus restoring it to the version that netted a Palme d'Or nomination at 1960's Cannes Film Festival. 

In the history of Spanish cinema, Carlos Saura is often placed, chronologically, after Luis Buñuel–who also worked in France and Mexico–and before Pedro Almodóvar as the top three filmmakers. (Saura, who dedicated Peppermint Frappé to Buñuel, also considered him a friend.) 

The Criterion Collection has reissued five of his features, including 1976's stunning Cría Cuervos… with his one-time companion Geraldine Chaplin; four of those films are available exclusively as part of box sets, while 13 are currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. 

So, he's hardly an unknown quantity, and it isn't hard to see many--though not all--of his films. Nonetheless, I hadn't heard of Los Golfos until Radiance reissued it last fall, and I'm not sure why, but I think it's a combination of a troubled afterlife and because it doesn't quite fit with the rest of his 44 non-fiction and narrative features, even though he was a fairly restless talent with wide-ranging interests. 

It's a tough-minded picture fueled by fury that doesn't just speak to Spain in 1959, when it was made, but to any country in which young, working class people have few opportunities to better themselves–a situation hardly unknown in the United States, especially in its more impoverished regions. 

For my money, it bears comparison with José Antonio Nieves Conde's Surcos ("Furrows"), Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados ("The Forgotten Ones"), and Fellini's semiautobiographical I Vitelloni ("The Layabouts"), and deserves nearly as much acclaim as those celebrated early-career films. 

Los Golfos is out now on Blu-ray with author and curator interviews, two short films (including 1955's La Llamada), a handsome booklet featuring an excellent essay, "And the World Goes Round," from British critic Mar Diestro-Dópido, and other contextual extras. Another winner from Radiance Films (available in the US via MVD). Images from Slant Magazine, Pere Portabella (Óscar Cruz), Grasshopper Films / The New York Times (Andrés Roca Rey), Blu-ray.com (Luis Marín), the IMDb (Cruz with María Mayer and Arturo Ors), and Gianni Ferrari / Getty Images / Le Monde (Carlos Saura in 1966).

Writing a Life: Kristen Stewart’s Triumphant Directorial Debut, The Chronology of Water

THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER 

(Kristen Stewart, USA, 2025, 128 minutes) 

"It's all a series of fragments, repetitions, pattern formations…" 

Kristen Stewart's full-length debut, an empathetic adaptation of The Chronology of Water, adheres to the fragmentary form of Lidia Yuknavich's 2011 memoir, a recollection of the incidents that shaped a troubled and ultimately joyous life, but not always in chronological order (it follows Stewart's 2017 short Come Swim). It isn't, after all, how we remember things, and both book and film play like a swarm of vivid memories. 

They aren't Stewart's memories, but after eight years and 500 drafts of the screenplay, she must have felt as if she had earned joint custody.

Much like RaMell Ross's adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Nickel Boys and Mary Bronstein's If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, even individual sequences are fragmentary, since DP Corey Waters often skews the 16mm compositions. 

Instead of full-frame bodies or faces, he captures parts of the whole, frequently emphasizing texture over shape. It's a sensual approach, though so intimate it can prove disorienting until the fragments take fuller shape and start to cohere thanks to editor Olivia Neergaard-Holm's intricate work.

The film begins with a stillbirth. Lidia's older sister, Claudia (Thora Birch), comforts her as she (Imogen Poots) processes a loss she associates with water–she associates everything with water–because Lidia is, or was, a competitive swimmer. As she crumples to the shower floor, and as the water continues to flow, blood that once sustained a life now runs down the drain. 

One minute, she's an adult, and then she's a child with an alcoholic stay-at-home mother (For the People's Susannah Flood) and an abusive architect father (German actor Michael Epp, convincing as a native Pacific Northwesterner). Swimming is something she's good at, and it's also an escape. Other coping mechanisms include journaling, collecting rocks, and re-reading her sister's copy of Vita Sackville-West's St. Joan of Arc. 

The film continues to toggle between childhood and adulthood (Angelika Mihailova and Anna Wittowsky play Lidia as a child, while 35-year-old Poots successfully passes for the high school and college-age Lidia). 

Since the fragments are so brief–even more so than the book's short chapters–sporadic voiceover provides an internal monologue; an expression of Lidia's feelings rather than a delivery system for exposition. Composer Paris Hurley, who provided the score for Rose Glass's pulpy thriller Love Lies Bleeding with Stewart, contributes to the sense of unease and discomfort. 

Lidia's dad, who recalls Jon Hamm on Mad Men, is a handsome creep; a reminder that not all sexual predators are unattractive men who can't hold down a job; they exist, too, but this kind is more likely to get away with it. 

Claudia leaves home as soon as she can, leaving Lidia defenseless until she goes away to college. For all her mother's faults, the real-life Yuknavich extends little sympathy to an unhappy woman who suffered from crippling depression compounded by a painful disability, a philandering husband, and an unsuccessful battle with the bottle. Lidia and Claudia deserved better to be sure, but Dorothy did, too, and her options were even more limited.

For Lidia, her mother's native Texas--Austin rather than Port Arthur--represents freedom, but left to her own devices, she develops an insatiable appetite for sex, drugs, and drink; a problem for any young person, but especially an athlete on scholarship. She also falls for Phillip, an aspiring musician, who tells her, "It's my father and my brother who have the real voices" when she compliments his singing–a bit of an inside joke, since he's played by Earl Cave, the son of Nick Cave (if anything, he is a better singer). 

Phillip is a good guy, but all Lidia knows is bad guys, so she keeps fucking up, but he has an inexhaustible capacity for forgiveness, and he becomes her first husband. There will be others after that relationship runs aground, as well as relationships with women, including a college friend (Esmé Creed-Miles), transgressive novelist Kathy Acker (not featured in the film), and an older dominatrix (nicely played by post-punk musician Kim Gordon). 

By the time Lidia ends up at the University of Oregon, where Ken Kesey (an excellent Jim Belushi) becomes her mentor, she's a mess, but so is he, with his great novels long behind him. In Lidia's memoir, she details his many shortcomings, but he encouraged her talent–Kathy Acker did, too–and it seems unlikely her book would exist without his fatherly guidance. 

Sometimes when two people meet while one is on the way up and the other is on the way down, they click in the middle. It's about timing as much as shared interests and compatible personas. If Lidia and Kesey had met at a different time, they might not have been able to connect in the same way.

Claudia aside, none of these relationships are built to last until Lidia meets Andy (Charlie Carrick), a writing student 10 years her junior who will become her husband and the father of their child. Just as Stewart and her spouse, producer Dylan Meyer, have collaborated on projects, like this film, Yuknavich and Mingo have worked together, most significantly on their own independent press. 

Beyond the fact that this is a well-made film from a neophyte writer/director who appears to have learned well from the art house auteurs with whom she has worked, like Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper) and Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women), it's exceptionally well cast. Thora Birch hasn't had the easiest time of it since her American Beauty/Ghost World days, and she honors the faith Stewart, who also started out as a youth actor, puts in her.

Everybody else is pretty great, too, but Imogen Poots is fantastic. It shouldn't be news that she's a very good actor--from 28 Weeks Later to last year's Hedda--but she convinces in all of Lidia's many guises, including champion swimmer, reckless drunk, and established author and mother. 

Right: Ken Kesey to the left and Lidia Yuknavich to the right; he and his graduate students publishd a 1990 book called Caverns. 

It's often said that the book is better than the film, because it's often true, and The Chronology of Water, which started out as a short story, wouldn't have been possible without Lidia's life and work--something that affected Stewart so deeply she reached out years ago to visit the author, and the two became friends. As Stewart told Kate Dwyer, Yuknavich "changed or at least helped shape my relationship with expression itself; not a small thing.'

So, it isn't completely fair to say that the film is better than the book, but I preferred it, because Lidia can be a very performative writer. That isn't to suggest she's insincere, though she does classify herself as an experimental writer, an outlier. Her book always makes sense, and there's nothing wrong with a varied writing style, but as a screenwriter, Stewart cuts out a lot of the showy stuff to focus on the essence of incidents. It's not about making Lidia more likeable, since she does plenty of unlikeable things to herself and others, but about making her more relatable–and less eager to impress. 

A few years ago, Stewart acknowledged that she was having a hard time finding funding for her film, and it led to a lot of hand-wringing from critics in light of her achievements as an actor, but she found a way--filming in Latvia and Malta, for one thing--and she also found a distributor--The Forge--but not one of the big names you might expect, so her debut hasn't gotten as much attention as it deserves, despite a six-minute standing ovation at Cannes and praise from the likes of Sheila O'Malley and Richard Brody.

Things might have been different if Kristen Stewart had cast herself, but she made the best choice, the right choice, in casting UK-born Imogen Poots to play all-American fuckup-turned-bestselling-novelist Lidia Yuknavich. 

She could have put herself front and center, and it might have pleased financiers, but she chose to honor the story of a woman who made sense out of her life through writing. I couldn't say for sure, but I believe the film served a similar purpose for its maker, who has really done herself proud. 

The Chronology of Water, which opened in Seattle on Jan 9, returns for a run at SIFF Film Center thanks to the Grand Illusion Cinema on Jan 30 and Feb 1, 12, and 18. Images from MK (Imogen Poots), Kino-Zeit (Poots and Thora Birch), Les Films du Losange / The Daily Beast (Susannah Flood, Michael Epp, and kids), The Forge (Flood), Variety (Jim Belushi), and Hawthorne Books (Ken Kesey, Lidia Yuknavich, and other students).  

Joy Wilkinson Reinvents the Erotic Thriller for a New Era in 7 Keys, Her First Feature Film

7 KEYS
(Joy Wilkinson, UK, 2024, 94 minutes) 

For her feature-film debut, British playwright and television writer Joy Wilkinson (Dr. Who, Lockwood & Co.) crafts a riveting erotic thriller. 

It begins as Lena (Emma McDonald, The Serpent Queen), a working-class single mother in London, dresses up for a night on the town–complete with oversized hoop earrings and short, fitted dress–to meet a man she met on a dating app. With a history of abandonment, she's eager for connection.

She waits and waits, but he doesn't show, so she commiserates with Daniel (1917's Billy Postlethwaite, rangy son of Pete Postlethwaite), whose date also ghosted him. "It's a big city full of assholes," she reasons (McDonald and Postlethwaite previously worked together in Paul Hart’s 2019 musical version of Macbeth and Wilkinson’s 2021 short "The Everlasting Club").  

Daniel keeps the key–or copy of the key–to every place he's lived, and he's lived all over the city, so she suggests they sneak into each one. He's put off by her assertiveness, and at first she seems like the predator, but he eventually relents. It injects excitement into her life, on the one hand; on the other, visiting his past helps Lena to better understand this stranger. It works until it doesn't. Then it all goes to shit. 

Lena didn't tell Daniel she has a seven-year-old son--she and his father share custody--and Daniel didn't tell Lena about his sociopathic tendencies, because why would he? He's a sociopath, and what starts out as an unexpected, adventurous date turns into a perilous battle for survival. 

For a $300K debut, 7 Keys is stylish, but not slick, with each section represented by a different color scheme and a score that ranges from suspenseful to ominous as Lena and Daniel reveal more of themselves, through words and actions, and the situation escalates from erotic to horrific (the film was shot by Mary Farbrother and scored by Max Perryment). 

If the ending could be more satisfying, the acting is always compelling, particularly from the  charismatic Emma McDonald. Until he turns aggressive and demanding, Daniel is more withdrawn by comparison, which Lena initially reads as timidity or cautiousness.

Neither victim nor superwoman, she takes risks to be sure–loneliness can do that to a person–but she's strong and resourceful, yet also openhearted and nurturing. Wilkinson doesn't press the point, but they're valuable qualities for a single mother...though her ability to read social cues could use work.

In her director's statement, the filmmaker explains the thinking behind a scenario both symbolic and plausible: "I've always been fascinated by keys. They're mythic objects in stories, unlocking secret places, other worlds, and even in our world, they have a magic. Children can't be trusted with them, which fueled my childhood fears of being homeless and my obsession with finding a home, primal drives that still fill my dreams and nightmares." She adds, "Keys had power to unlock new experiences. Illicit things." 

The end result plays like a post-millennial take on the 1990s erotic thriller with a woman of color given greater agency than the sidekick roles of yore. Lena reminded me of Stephanie Sigman's Laura in Gerardo Naranjo's original Spanish-language Miss Bala or Matilda Lutz's Jen in Coralie Fargeat’s blood-soaked Revenge. 

Those films have more gore, but all three women, accustomed to being underestimated, find reserves of strength when tangling with men too dazzled or tradition-minded to understand what they're up against. 

There's no slut-shaming here, just a story about loneliness in the big city and a vulnerable woman's desire for companionship gone very, very wrong. 

7 Keys premieres on VOD Jan 27, 2026. Images from the Jeva Films via IMDb (Emma McDonald) and Mashable (McDonald and Billy Postlethwaite).